While we were doing Early Restaurants Miss Anna said, “We must take in Crosby Place.”
This pleased me hugely, for I remembered how Gloucester, in Richard the Third was everlastingly repairing to Crosby Place, and I desired to know what was the attraction.
I found it interesting, but, lacking Gloucester, I shall not repair there often. To be sure, it is a magnificent house, Gothic, Perpendicular, and all that; the hangings and appointments are, probably, much as they used to be, but after all, I do not care greatly for eating among Emotions.
Whereupon Miss Anna cheerfully proposed that we visit the Tower.
“No,” said I, with decision; and then, my mind still on Richard the Third, I quoted: “I do not like the Tower, of any place.”
I’m not sure I should have been able so bravely to disclaim an interest in the Tower, had it not been that the night before I had heard a wise and prominent Londoner state the fact that he had never visited it.
“No Londoner has ever been to the Tower,” he declared. “We used to say that we intended to go some time or other, but now we don’t even say that.”
I was greatly relieved to learn this, for I’m positive that the Tower is hideous and uninteresting. As an alternative, I asked that we might visit the railway stations.
Aside from the romance that is indigenous to all railway stations, there are peculiar characteristics of the great London termini that are of absorbing interest. And so strong are the claims each puts forth for pre-eminence, it is indeed difficult to award a palm.
Euston has its columns, Charing Cross its Tribute to Queen Eleanor, St. Pancras a spacious roominess, and Victoria a wofully-crowded and limited space. Each station has its own sort of people, and, though indubitably they must mingle upon occasion, yet the type of crowd at each station is invariably the same.